Sleeping Tiger (16 page)

The steps of the main hatch led down into the galley, a portion of which had been fitted out as a navigation table, with drawers beneath wide enough for charts. Beyond this was the cabin, with two berths on either side of a folding table. Selina asked if this was where George slept, and when George said it was, she pointed out that while he was a good six feet, the bunks could only be four and a half feet long. George, with the air of a conjurer, showed her how the ends of the bunks extended beneath the sideboards.

“Oh, I see. So you sleep with your feet in a hole.”

“That's the idea. And very cosy it is, too.”

There were a great many books, held in position on their shelves by retainer bars, and the cushions on the berths were blue and red, and a paraffin lamp swung on gimbals. There were some photographs of
Eclipse
under sail, complete with the ballooning stripes of a massive spinnaker, and a locker door, left open, bulged with yellow oilskins. George went forward, easing his way around the white painted column of the mast, and Selina followed him and in the tiny triangular forepeak there was a lavatory, and the chain and sail lockers.

She said again, “It seems so small. I can't imagine living in such close quarters.”

“You get used to it. And when you're single-handed, you live in the cockpit. That's why the galley's so handy, so that you can reach in and grab sustenance when you're under way. Come on, let's go back.”

Selina went ahead, and behind her he paused to unscrew the portholes and push them open. In the galley, she reached through the hatch for the picnic basket and brought it in, out of the sun. There was a slim-necked bottle of wine which felt sadly warm, but when she told George about this, he produced a length of twine and tied it around the neck of the bottle and hung it overboard. Then he went below again and returned, carrying one of the foam-rubber mattresses from the cabin berth.

“What's that for?”

“I thought you'd like to sunbathe.” He heaved it up on to the coach roof.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to fit the propeller?”

“No, I'll wait till the sea warms up a bit, or get someone else to do it for me.” He disappeared below again, and Selina took the Spanish grammar and climbed up on to the coach roof and draped herself over the mattress. She opened the grammar and read, “Nouns are either masculine or feminine. They should always be learned with the definite article.”

It was very warm. She dropped her head on the open book and closed her eyes. There was the lap of water and the smell of pines and comforting heat of the sun. She spread her arms to its warmth, and her hands and her fingers, and the rest of the world slid away, so that reality was here and now, a white yacht anchored in a blue inlet, with George Dyer moving about below, in the cabin, opening and shutting lockers and occasionally swearing when he dropped something.

Later, she opened her eyes, and said, “George.”

“Umm…?” He was sitting in the cockpit naked to the waist, smoking a cigarette, and winding a rope into an immaculate coil.

“I know about masculine and feminine now.”

“Well, that's a good start.”

“I thought I might swim.”

“Well, swim then.”

She sat up, pushing her hair back from her face.

“Will it be terribly cold?”

“After Frinton, nothing could be cold.”

“How did you know I used to go to Frinton?”

“It's a primeval instinct I have about you. I see you spending your summers there with Nanny. Blue with cold, and shivering.”

“You're right, of course. And there are pebbles on the beach, and I always had an enormous sweater over my bathing-suit. Agnes used to hate it, too. Goodness knows why we got sent there.”

She stood up and began to unbutton her shirt.

George said, “It's very deep. You can swim?”

“Of course I can swim.”

“I'll keep the harpoon handy in case of man-eating sharks.”

“Oh, funny!” She pulled off the shirt, and she was wearing the bikini he had given her. He said, “Good God!” because it had been meant as a joke, and he had never imagined that she would have the nerve to put it on, but now he felt as if the joke had back-fired and he was left standing with egg all over his face. Again the word innocence stood up and hit him, and he thought, unfairly, of Frances, with her weather-beaten, black-tanned body and the raffish bikinis which on her could never be anything but vulgar.

He was never sure whether Selina heard his astounded exclamation, for at that moment she dived, and he watched her swimming, neatly and without a splash, and with her long hair fanning out in the water behind her like a new and beautiful species of seaweed.

When at last she came in, shuddering with cold, he shoved a towel at her, and went down to the galley to find something for her to eat; a round of bread with some of Juanita's goat's milk cheese. When he returned, she was back on the coach roof, in the sun, rubbing her hair with the towel. She reminded him of Pearl. He gave her the bread and she said, “At Frinton it was always a ginger snap. Agnes used to call them shivery bites.”

“She would.”

“You mustn't say things like that. You've never even met her.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You'd probably like her. You'd probably find a lot in common. Agnes always looks desperately cross, but it doesn't mean a thing. Her bark is much worse than her bite.”

“Thank you very much.”

“It's meant as a compliment. I'm very fond of Agnes.”

“Perhaps if I learn to knit you'll grow fond of me too.”

“Is there any more bread? I'm still hungry.”

He went below again, and when he returned she was lying on her stomach once more, with the grammar book open. She said, “
Yo
—I.
Tú
—you, (familiar),
Usted
—you (polite).”

“Not
Usted. Usteth.…
” He gave it the subtle Spanish lisp.

“Usteth…”
She took the bread and began to eat it, absently. “You know, it's funny, but although you know quite a lot about me … I've had to tell you, of course, because of thinking you were my father … but I don't really know anything at all about you.”

He did not reply, and she turned to look at him. He was standing in the cockpit, his head on a level with hers and not two feet away, but his face was turned from her; he was watching one of the fishing-boats move out of the harbour across the pellucid, blue-green water, and all she could see was the brown line of forehead and cheek and jaw. He did not even turn when she spoke, but after a little, he said, “No, I don't suppose you do.”

“And I was right, wasn't I?
Fiesta at Cala Fuerte
wasn't about you. You hardly came into the book.”

The fishing-boat edged between the bearings of the deep-water channel, and George said, “What are you so anxious to know?”

“Nothing.” She was wishing already that she had not broached the subject. “Nothing in particular.” She turned down the corner of the page of his grammar, and then smoothed it out again quickly because she had been taught that this was a bad habit. “I suppose I'm just being inquisitive. Rodney, my lawyer—you know, I told you—it was he who gave me your book. And when I told him that I thought you were my father and that I wanted to come and find you, he said that I should let the sleeping tiger lie.”

“That sounds a very imaginative thing for Rodney to have said.” The fishing-boat passed them, moved into deep water, quickened her engines and headed for the open sea. George turned to face her. “Was I the tiger?”

“Not really. He just didn't want me to stir up a lot of complications.”

“You didn't take his advice.”

“No, I know.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Just that I'm naturally nosy, I suppose. I'm sorry.”

“I haven't anything to hide.”

“I like to know about people. Their family and their parents.”

“My father was killed in nineteen forty.”

“
Your
father was killed, too?”

“His destroyer was torpedoed by a U-boat in the Atlantic.”

“Was he in the navy?” George nodded. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Did you have brothers and sisters?”

“No.”

“What happened to you then?”

“Well, let's see … I stayed at school, and then I did my National Service, and then I decided to stay on in the army and take a commission, which I did.”

“Didn't you want to be in the navy like your father?”

“No. I thought the army might be more fun.”

“And was it?”

“Some of it. Not all of it. And then … my Uncle George suggested that as he had no sons of his own, it might be a good idea if I went into the family business.”

“What was that?”

“Woollen mills in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”

“And you went?”

“Yes. It rather seemed to be my duty.”

“But you didn't want to.”

“No, I didn't want to.”

“What happened then?”

He looked vague. “Well, nothing. I stayed in Bradderford for five years, which I'd agreed to do, and then I sold up my share of the business and got out.”

“Didn't your Uncle George mind?”

“He wasn't awfully pleased.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I bought
Eclipse
on the proceeds and after a few years of wandering I fetched up here and lived happily ever after.”

“And then you wrote your book.”

“Yes, of course, I wrote my book.”

“And that's the most important thing of all.”

“Why so important?”

“Because it's creative. It comes from inside you. To be able to write is a gift. I can't do a single thing.”

“I can't do a single thing either,” said George, “which is why Mr. Rutland sent me that cryptic message through the medium of you.”

“Aren't you going to write another book?”

“Believe me, I would if I could. I did start off, but the thing was such a grinding failure I tore it up into little pieces and had a sort of ritual bonfire. It was discouraging, to say the least of it. And I promised the old boy I'd produce a second effort, even if it was only an idea, within a year, but of course I haven't. I've been told I'm suffering from a writer's block, which, if you're interested, is like the worst sort of mental constipation.”

“What did you try to write the second book about?”

“A voyage I did to the Aegean, before I came to live here.”

“What went wrong?”

“It was tedious. It was a super trip, but the way I wrote about it, it sounded about as exciting as a bus ride through Leeds on a wet Sunday in November. Anyway, it's all been done before.”

“But that isn't the point. Surely you have to find an original angle, or a new approach. Isn't that how it works?”

“Well, of course.” He smiled at her. “You're not as green as you're cabbage-looking.”

“You say nice things in a horrible way.”

“I know. I'm twisted and warped. Now, how about those personal pronouns?”

Selina looked back at the book. “
Usted.
You.
El.
He.
Ella.…”

“You pronounce a double ‘I' as though it had a ‘y' behind it.
Elya.”

“Elya,”
said Selina, and looked up at him again. “Were you never married?”

He did not reply at once, but his face tensed up as though she had switched on a light and held it to his eyes. Then he said, calmly enough, “I never married. But I was once engaged.” Selina waited, and, perhaps encouraged by her silence, he went on. “It was while I was in Bradderford. Her parents were Bradderford people, very rich, very kind, selfmade. The salt of the earth, really. The father drove a Bentley and the mother drove a Jaguar, and Jenny had a hunter about ten feet high, and a patent automatic horse-box, and they used to go to San Moritz to ski, and to Formentor for their summer holidays, and to the Leeds Music Festival, because they thought it was expected of them.”

“I don't know whether you're being kind or cruel.”

“I don't know either.”

“But why did she break it off?”

“She didn't. I did. Two weeks before the biggest wedding Bradderford had ever known. For months I couldn't get near Jenny for bridesmaids and trousseaux and caterers and photographers and wedding-presents. Oh, God, those wedding-presents! And it began to be like a high wall between us, so that I couldn't get near her. And when I realised that she didn't mind about the wall, she didn't even know it was there … well, I've never had an awful lot of self-respect, but what I did have I wanted to keep.”

“Did you tell her you weren't going to marry her?”

“Yes. I went to her house. I told Jenny and then I told her parents. And it all took place in a room filled with crates and boxes and tissue paper and silver candlesticks and salad bowls and tea-sets and hundreds of toast racks. It was gruesome. Ghastly.” He shuddered slightly at the memory. “I felt like a murderer.”

Selina thought of the new flat, of the carpets and the chintzes, the ritual of the white dress and the church wedding and having Mr. Arthurstone to give her away. The panic that suddenly visited her was the panic of a bad dream. Of being lost, and knowing that you were lost. Knowing that somewhere you had taken the wrong turning and ahead there could be nothing but disaster, precipitous cliffs and every sort of nameless fear. She wanted to leap to her feet, to escape and run away from everything she had ever committed herself to doing.

“Was … was that when you left Bradderford?”

“Don't look so horrified. No, it wasn't; I had another two years to run. I spent them being
persona non grata
with all the debs' mums and being cut by all sorts of unexpected people. It was rather interesting in a way, finding out who my real friends were…” He moved forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the coach roof. “But all this is doing nothing to improve your faultless Castilian Spanish. See if you can say the present tense of
Hablar.
”